Pizza Margherita! (CONTEST IS CLOSED)

Today our new book is finally available and we couldn’t be happier to welcome Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day into our happy family. We are so excited for you to get baking from it, so we’re posting one of our favorite doughs from the book. I have to admit it took us a while to decide which one to share, since our favorite seems to change with our moods. This Olive Oil Dough is fantastic for a thin crust, a thick crust and so many of our worldly flatbreads. No matter the technique you decide to try, you’ll love the results.

We like to make the classic Pizza Margherita, it’s the ultimate in Italian toppings. In fact, the colors resemble the Italian flag and the pizza was named for the Italian queen, Margherita, because she fell in love with it. Nothing but tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil. So pure and so tasty.

We want to invite you to visit us while we are on book tour. To find dates and cities please visit our Events page. Hope to meet you!

To make the dough: Use our dump and stir method of mixing the dough in a 5-quart Container with Lid, using a Danish Dough Whisk or wooden spoon. Then cover the container, not airtight and let it rest for about 2 hours on the counter. The dough can then be used right away, but it is much easier to handle once it has been thoroughly chilled. The dough can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 weeks!

To make the pizza:

Preheat your oven to the highest setting, which will be 500 to 550°F, with a pizza stone in the bottom 1/3 of the oven. Depending on the thickness of your stone this can take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Pull out an 8-ounce piece of dough from your bucket and quickly form it into a ball, no more than 30 seconds of work. Let it sit on the counter while you gather your toppings.

Roll the ball out into a 1/8-inch-thick round. If the ball is resisting just let it sit for about 5 minutes and it will relax and allow you to work with it.

I am excited to see that you have a third book. I have a basic baking question for you.

If I make a recipe requiring a loaf pan, can I shape it the night before, stick it in the pan in the fridge, and then bake it the next afternoon straight from the fridge?

I don’t get home from work during the week until 5, so I’d love to be able to just stick your breads in the oven then, rather than shaping and waiting for the rise that day. I have let breads rise in the fridge before, but never your recipes.

I’d love to start using your recipes during the week as well, not just the weekends.

Yes, we highly recommend that you form the dough the night before, place it in the greased pan, cover loosely with plastic and refrigerate. The next day you can place it on the counter while you are preheating the oven and then bake it, even if it isn’t completely warmed through. It will have risen slowly over the many hours of refrigeration.

My favorite pizza is flatbread pizza topped with fresh figs, carmelized onions, proscuitto and blue cheese. it’s beecome a hit in my house. I love your books. I just put in a new cooks kitchen and bread has become a family affair for us.

I really appreciate that in an age of “tastes like takeout” pizza that you can cook at home, people are getting into making “tastes like homemade” pizza napoletana. And you couldn’t improve much more than the margherita variety!

My favorite pizza is the “Mystic’s Pizza” served at Angeli’s in New Orleans. My husband and I will travel there just for the pizza. It consists of garlic oil, roasted red pepper, red onions, mozzarella and feta cheese. So delicious!

My favorite pizza is sauteed greens with roasted onion, green olives, and thinly-sliced meyer lemons. I use the dough recipes in your first book with great results for pizza, and can’t wait to get hands on the new book for more recipes and inspiration!

Having spent a decent portion of my early life in NJ, where the predominent style of land use planning is known as “pizza shop on every corner,” I’m a traditionalist at heart and will never turn down a good slice of NY style pepperoni. However, in my own cooking life now, flavors of SE Asia, Latin America and the American south prevail. Consequently, my pizza tastes have expanded as well. I like to use the flavors of my favorite cuisines as pizza toppings. Right now my favorite flavor is based on a recipe for an Indian dish, called “uppama,” which is eaten as a side dish or a breakfast staple in many parts of India, and is cream of wheat based. An “Uppama pizza” has tomatoes, curry leaf, cumin seed, garlic, ginger, fresh chile and fresh paneer or mozzarella cheese and green peas. If I don’t have everything on hand, I’ll sometimes just top the pizza with the cheese and some tomato chutney from Suvir Saran’s “American Masala.”

Nothing like fresh made “thin” crusts like this with our homemade tomato sauce from our daughter’s garden bounty of roma tomatoes, fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella drizzled with EVOO. Makes me drool right now! Thanks for your great recipes and ideas. My family are wheat farmers – and I have always loved whole grain goodness from the field to the table.

My favorite pizza is made using your original master recipe for the Boule. It is such a versatile dough and makes the most wonderful pizza crust, my family and friends all love it! Toppings are secondary to the lovely crust, it’s what makes it so good.

i must have been living under an upside down broiler pan because i JUST discovered your books yesterday – very happily, i might add! i placed my order today for the books through amazon and can’t wait to start making a variety of breads. as for pizza, there’s nothing like a beautifully made margherita pizza by someone who knows what they’re doing thanks! ps. nice photos on your site, too!

I don’t know if the contest is still open, but I love anything on a thick pizza crust. We’ve been experimenting with different doughs from the HB book for the crusts. My kids all seem to like pretty normal toppings: ground beef, mozzerella, pepperoni. I’m not sure how they will react to the brussel sprouts pizza. : ) I am tempted to try them on it, though.

I just got your book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day from my local library. I’ve made one master recipe and two loaves of bread. My husband says it’s the best bread he has tasted and I’m sure that this book will be purchased and become a staple in our home. Thanks for your work. I’m quite excited about making bread again.